Who Are You on Facebook?

December 11, 2013 7:08 pmPublished by Timothy Savage

Facebook is now the internet. We are all on there. No one is left out. Yet despite the increase in the number of people on the network, Facebook has increasingly become a small town referral network for business and jobs. People want to hire someone that they know and like, and people are evaluated by the company they keep. Facebook shows that group of friends, family and influencers perfectly. In 2014 Facebook will be the epicenter of talent and opportunities on the internet.

The question for people is: who are you willing to be? Facebook has pictures of you, a list of your family member and friends, your favorite music, and even your pets. Who does that make you as either a candidate or as the person hiring? It makes you a person. Social Recruiting is about to become the norm. Are you willing to be yourself?

LinkedIn, Monster, Dice and all of the resume sites represent people who are looking; however, as recruiters, executive searchers, and sourcers, we are paid to find people that are not looking. The goal is to find the person that would be interested, yet is not actively looking. These are the people who get hired and stay. That is our job. These candidates are not on Monster, Dice or any resume sites. They are only on LinkedIn for representation, and they use Twitter to talk about what is happening in their life and industry. But most importantly, they are on Facebook talking about who they are.

Companies’ Facebook Career Pages showcase a their social culture, which is the most attractive thing to the candidate after companies’ actual products or service. It is going to become expected of recruiters and candidates to communicate on Facebook when they work on open positions together. Further, candidates are starting to submit for jobs posted on Facebook.

Companies want people who they know and who are authentic, because hiring with authenticity in mind will give them a better return on investment. Yet as things stand, when a company pays a fee for recruiters to find the talent, there is the consistent issue of people being hired and not working out. 60 days later the client is asking for the fee back or the recruiter is backfilling the position.

What can we learn from the publicly available portions of our Facebook profiles that can help prevent a refund or a backfill?

Lesson:

Social media recruiting is not a better form of sourcing. It is not just finding a huge list of people to search. It is not always a quicker way to find resumes. Social recruiting, however, takes things to a higher level by creating life-long relationships. These relationships will eventually be brought together to fill an open position.

Open up Facebook and communicate about who you actually are. This is a lesson for recruiters and job seekers. Be open and authentic with your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles.

Like, comment and repost things that are of interest to you.

Let people get to know who you are through the content you post.

Talk about your family, music, pets, sports, food.

The same way that your company’s Facebook Career Site should create your employer brand, think of your posts as telling the story of you.

Everything you choose to make available can be referenced in a candidate’s or hiring manager’s decision-making process. In the hiring process, we should no longer ask, “How does my resume make me look,” but, “Am I truly ‘likable?’”

A blog by @TimSavage of @TalentAttach

Editor’s Note: To see and control what, how much, and with whom you’re sharing on Facebook, check out Facebook’s privacy policy here.

This post was written by Timothy Savage

1 Comment

For a while I operated two Twitter accounts (one personal/social, under a nickname – one professional, under my name) with this issue in mind. I’ve recently created a company Facebook so I have done the same with my Facebook to administrate the company page separately from my personal profile. I think there’s something for Twitter/Facebook to learn here from Google+’s groups; namely, why can’t you run two accounts (one personal/social and secure, one personal/professional) from the same email account. Having an easy to populate Facebook Work account (FaceWork?) would surely give LinkedIn a run for it’s money.